Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup 1.1.2 testing - problems

[Kevin Horton]

On 26 Nov 2005, at 09:00, Kevin Horton wrote:

> On 19 Nov 2005, at 24:21, Ben Escoto wrote:
>
> > > > > > > Kevin Horton <address@hidden>
> > > > > > > wrote the following on Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:39:49 -0500
> >
> > Hmm, I don't really know what could be the problem.  My one  
> > thought is
> > that there might be a problem with python's gzip on your system.   
> > I've
> > written a little gzip script on your system, you can download it at:
> >
> > https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/download.php? 
> > item_id=15006&item_file_id=3111
> >
> > Once saved you can:
> >
> > chmod 755 gzip-python
> > ./gzip-python <file>
> >
> > and it will work a bit like gzip, writing a compressed version of
> > <file> to <file>.gz.  So I'd be interested to see if you can compress
> > files (including large files, like 4GB+ files) that decompress to the
> > correct original files.
>
> I did a whole bunch of testing using the above gzip-python script.   
> There is indeed a problem somewhere with large files.  I got a high  
> failure rate with large (5.7 GB) files using fink's python 2.4.2  
> and also with Apple's stock python 2.3.5.  I will take this up in  
> another forum.
>
> I'm giving up on rdiff-backup for now, as it seems that there are  
> python issues on OS X that make it unreliable for me.  I am  
> prepared to help out with testing in my spare time, and I hope to  
> be using rdiff-backup again someday.

I eventually figured out that I had a bad stick of RAM.  It seemed to  
work fine most of the time, but it had one bit at one location that  
would stick if the machine was working hard.   One run of tests in  
memtest would pass, but if you put it on several rounds of successive  
tests it would start failing.  I pulled that bad stick out, and have  
been using rdiff-backup hard for the last week - no failures.  I also  
did a large number of tests using your gzip-python script on a 5.7GB  
file - no failures.

So, I will be happy to participate in any OS X related testing  
again.  I'm currently using rdiff-backup 1.1.4, installed via the  
fink packaging system, with no extra patches.

Kevin Horton
Ottawa, Canada